There were cooking demonstrations with pert and pretty TV hosts, lunch with newspaper and magazine editors, dinner with book reviewers…dozens and dozens of radio shows…meetings upon meetings, so many you’d forget where you were and if you had just said the same thing.

All this has now vanished. Gone. Totally. Forever. Even the bookstores are fading like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

So now what?

What can be done to let the world know about your book?

There’s Amazon. Everyone’s best hope. A general cookbook may be offered section by section: the reader just buys the soups or salads chapter.

The next step will require a sweet seduction of the bloggers.

Instead of packaging the book and mailing it, we can send the entire manuscript by email with “peek inside” suggestions and passages highlighted.

Social networking will become increasingly important as a sales tool.  We must earnestly dedicate ourselves to our blogs and the use of digital newsletters.

This will work for literary food writing. How to videos must now be incorporated into recipe books.

And. Just a thought…if you want a cookbook, it is far easier to go out and buy one…cheaper too.

Several years ago, when I was working at The Rainbow Room, there were too few reservations for the big New Year’s Eve dinner. A full page ad was designed for The New York Times. It listed all the fabulous goodies the guests would be receiving: free champagne, top of the line entertainers, big bands, phenomenal food, fantastic view of the fireworks on the East River.

Joe Baum reached for the designers’ ad lay out.

Across the entire page he wrote: SOLD OUT.

“Run it,” he demanded.

We gasped.

“Wait,” he instructed. And left the room.

Instantly the phones rang.

Incredible lies were told: “I am the chef’s mother, I made my reservation six weeks ago…I’ve been coming to New Year’s Eve every year for 35 years…”

The reservations desk responded: So sorry…we’re sold out…but we can put you on a waiting list. It’s an additional $25 per person cost.

The room filled immediately.

The lesson I learned was that Jobs Baum knew to whom he was speaking. In Manhattan, if a place is sold out, it is the only place to be.

The Cookbook Conference that begins on Friday in Manhattan is sold out…Ha…I have already received four requests asking me to use my (zero) influence to bypass the system…I didn’t (couldn’t) though fully expect to see the callers there.

Food is an important part of the work of a wedding planner.  It must be appropriate to the space, served simultaneously to a hundred or more guests, accommodate all tastes and dietary demands and remain on budget.

Uncommon ingredients may need to be purchased from other countries and coaxed through watchful customs agents.

The planner must be a good diplomat and be energetic, personable, tactful, able to work well under pressure, and with all kinds of people who may behave badly, while remaining confident, optimistic, flexible and creative.

A flair for the dramatic is helpful, and a sense of humor is essential.

It is necessary to keep track of the many details while keeping everyone one on speaking terms.

Many establish their fees as a percentage of the production costs.

Note: The cost of a wedding ceremony itself is surprisingly modest, considering its importance. Loving couples can expect to pay between $10 and $100 for a 15-minute ceremony. Unloving couples can count on paying hundreds of dollars an hour for the services of a fancy divorce lawyer. It takes many more hours to dissolve a marriage than to consummate one.

To make the content available to those unable to attend, ten panels on Friday and Saturday, February 10-11, 9 am-6 pm, will be webcast. Anyone can tune in, watch the panels, and tweet questions.  In addition, all 28 panels will be filmed and will be up on the same website a week or two after the conference. The broadcast schedule  is available on the conference website:
www.cookbookconf.com <http://www.cookbookconf.com>

The url for it is:

http://cookbookconf.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/FINALFINALSCHEDULE.pdf

The meeting is taking place at the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC is the site. This is a small hotel near Grand Central Station. It is a  welcoming and quite inexpensive place to stay. I like it a lot.

All this reminds me of a dinner in Lyon. My American friends were the hosts. They had spent many summers in the South of France dining in the grandest of the grand restaurants. They left exceedingly generous tips.

They decided to invite six of the most illustrious chefs to dinner at their rented villa. The chefs accepted and showed up at the appointed hour. My friends had cooked a leg of lamb and invited Paul Bocuse to carve it. Chef Bocuse rose from his chair, bowed and grasped the carving knife. He rested the fork on the roasted meat for a fraction of a minute.

“C’est terrible!’ He declared with a deep frown and promptly sat down.

He explained, When the little lambs are in the field, the flies come. Standing on one leg, the lamb brushes away the flies with his other leg. Thus one leg is more muscular and less tender than the other.

“Madame, You have served the wrong leg!”

With a roar of laughter, he proceeded to cut the meat.

In the last semester one fellow said he just wants to ride his Harley and write about food. He’s landed a column at a biking magazine!

This is the first day of the new class at the CIA. It is an elective and 27 students have enrolled.  This is what I’m planning to say:

May I begin by asking you to look at the person seated next to you. And to the person seated in front and behind you?

Immediately you’ll see there is nobody in the world who looks like you, thinks like you or has had the same experiences you have had. You are unique. And special. And as Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh:

Promise me you’ll always remember you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.  So to echo President Obama: Yes you can!

This should get us ALL FIRED UP AND READY TO GO!

Teaching this class is what I love to do.

At first I was hesitant, thinking this was a huge imposition, but every single person responded immediately and enthusiastically: Nach Waxman owner of my favorite store contributed an essay about his life at Kitchen Arts & Letters, so did Barbara Haber who laid the foundation of the cookbook collection at the Schlessenger Library and literary agent Lisa Ekus and Delores Custer the Queen of food styling. Betty Fussell, Darra Goldstein (Gastronomica) and Anne Willan and David Robinson described their work as did dozens of others who provided wonderful insights and really useful information for the readers.

They say it is lonely being a writer. What rubbish! When I look at my network of cherished friends, I realize I am part of a lovely, celebratory, constantly hungry crowd of food lovers. This makes me rich beyond my wildest dreams.

“Good Food Jobs is a gastro-job search tool, designed to link people looking for meaningful food work with the businesses that need their energy, enthusiasm and intellect. We post opportunities with farmers and food artisans, policy makers and purveyors, retailers and restaurateurs, economists, ecologists, and more…”

Go to the site for information about the conference planned for February in NYC.

For if I do, my health I’ll spoil

I’d spread my bread with gobs of butter

But that would set my doc aflutter.

Don’t serve me poultry, pork or beef

Or I will surely come to grief,

And that fine fish just from the sea

Would, fried, become the death of me.

At breakfast I must never poke

My fork at any golden yolk,

And salt, to which I was a slave

Now lures me to an early grave.

Sugar, friend of shildhood, sweet,

Is now a rare, forbidden treat.

A shot of gin, a glass of wine,

Add up to sins times nine,

For Julia is no more my guide

‘Tis to Nathan Pritikins’ rules I must abide

Farewell to all the eats I love

Farewell, so long, to all the above.

But as I chomp through fields of green

And shrink each day to sinewy lean,

Teach me, dear Lord,

Not to wish each course

Was rare roast beef

With béarnaise sauce…